Thursday, August 26, 2010

UMNO's Strategy to destabilise Pakataan Penang

Which is more serious? A school prinicipal making a blatant racial derogatory statement which was made in a public assembly or a mosque sermon made by a iman beseeching God to convert Lim GuanEng to be a muslim?

Yet in the eyes of the police which immediately formed a special team to investigate the mosque sermon allegations , a iman making a plea to God to effect a divine intervention to convert Lim Guan Eng was more of a serious offence.Hardly a single day after Penang UMNO chief Hamidi made the allegations, hell broke loose. Even the P.M commented that the police should investigate the matter.

At the same time it took almost one week for the DPM ,Muhyiddin to suggest the formation of a task force to investigate whether indeed the Principal of the school did make a derogatory statement .Why do we need a task force when the principal made the racial slur in front of an audience of a few hundred and subsequently tried to make restitution by making an apology to all the students.in the schools?.All the DPM had to confirm the allegations was to seek verification from the teachers who were present in the assembly to find out the truth. Once again the DPM has been found to be incompetent and once again this is confirmation that he is not equip to be our next P.M.

Once again we can see UMNO's attempt to destabilise the Pakatan Rakyat 's govt of Penang but ironically its attempt this time has alienated the very people it seek to win support. The malays in Penang has now come to the realisation that a non -malay Chief Minister can act fairly towards the malay community and that they do not have to rely on UMNO to be their sole protector of their race and religion..

In its first term , the Pakatan govt has given more funds for mosques and religious schools than the previous administration had ever given to the muslim community.. Although public tenders were made for state govt contracts, more bumi contractors were able to secure more contracts on a competitive basis. This process eliminated commision for middleman politicians and was thus a savings for the contractors and the govt.

Ultimately, UMNO must realised the futility in its efforts to destablise the Pakatan Rakyat states. It must come to its senses that the people will not allow or tolerate cosmetic changes.Its only option is to effect total changes in its governance or face total oblivion in the next election.

Sunday, August 01, 2010

Scholarshps should only be given based on merit.

I am perplexed that Malay Consultative council (MPM) comittee member, Professor Kamarudin Kachar could even come out with a suggestion that PSD scholarship should be given out on the basis of racial quotas. How ridiculous it is of him to suggest that meritocracy should not be the sole criteria in determining the award of scholarships and that instead it should be given 67% of all scholarships based on the country's racial ratio.

One could easily forgive the statement if it had come from an ordinary person with very little education but to come from some one who is a Professor and supposedly a personage of high academic excellence only serves to reflect the quality and character of our academicians who had perhaps for a long time benfitted from a racial quota system based mainly on race rather than merit.

Because of this flawed method of allocating scholarships to undeserving students based on racial quotas our standard of tertiary education has degenerated to a sub-standard level. Students graduating from such a flawed system are unemployable and in the long run is a burden to society.

Tertiary education cannot be considered as a right that must be freely given on the basis of race but in this age of globalisation, scholarships should only be given strictly on the basis of merit and nothing else. Scholarships cannot be viewed as a charitable gesture given merely to appease pro malay agenda. The ramification of simply giving scholarships other than based on the criteria of merit will create a pool of graduates which are substandard and unemployable.In the long run this pool of undergraduates will only be a burden to society and to the country.

It is inconceivable that a person of Professor Kamarudin Kachar background should opine that racial quotas should form the basis of selecting candidates for scholarships.Professor Kamarudin certainly must have profited from such a selection process and that explains his earnest endeavour to propagate the racial quotas selection meth